The document provides information about searching patents in the European Patent Office (EPO) database called espacenet. It discusses:
- A brief history of the EPO being established in 1977 by the European Patent Convention to create a centralized patent application and grant system.
- Basic search tips for espacenet including quick search, advanced search, classification search, and number search. It describes search fields, Boolean operators, truncation, and nested queries.
- Examples of different search types like quick search, advanced search, classification search, numbers search, and searching for legal status, event history and citations.
- Limitations of searching in espacenet including limitations on search terms, fields, number of results
1. European Patent Office
Patent searching in espacenet
Scitech Patent Art Services Pvt. Ltd
Hyderabad
2. A bit of history: a European idea
• 1958 Treaty of Rome (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
and West Germany)- 1) Euratom Treaty 2) European Community
• 1960 Idea of a European Patent
• 1973 Convention signed
• 1977 European Patent Office
• Established in 1977 by the European Patent Convention (EPC) with the aim of
creating a centralized patent application and grant system on behalf of all
contracting states, the EPO's mission is to support innovation, competitiveness
and economic growth for the benefit of the citizens of Europe. As of January
2009, the EPC has effect in 37 European countries, including all European
Union member states
• Recently Albania joined in the European Patent Organization on 1 may 2010
4. Basic search tips
Searches can be performed in the worldwide, European (EP) and WIPO (PCT) databases. Each search mask
contains a number of search fields corresponding to the type of data that can be searched.
You can choose between:
Quick search, which allows you to search for keywords in the title/abstract or for a person/organization
(applicant and/or inventor)
Advanced search, which enables you to search in the bibliographic data , including the abstract when
available
Number search, which allows you to retrieve a specific publication number, application number, priority number
with or without country code prefix or NPL reference number
You can enter a maximum of four search terms per field and a total of 21 search terms per mass
Boolean operators
Operators Use Example
To increase your chances of finding a patent that matches
OR your query, you can use the OR operator in combination with Fibrin OR Biopesticide
synonyms or related terms
You can narrow down a search by combining search terms
AND Fibrin AND Biopesticide
using the AND operator
If you use a term with more than one meaning, you may
NOT generate a result list containing patents that are not relevant Fibrin NOT Biopesticide
to your search, even though they match the query term.
5. Truncation
To extend your search, you can use truncation symbols (wildcards) to include, for example, the plural form of a word, or
alternative spellings.
There are three different wildcard characters available:
* - stands for a string of characters of any length
Example: Encaps* means Encapsule or encapsulate or encapsulation or encapsulated
? - stands for zero or one character
Example: Biopesticide? Means Biopesticide or Biopesticides
# - stands for exactly one character
Example: polymeri#ation means polymerization or polymerisation
Nested queries
If you want to nest query terms within other query terms, you must use parentheses to specify the order in which search
terms and operators should be interpreted. Information within parentheses is read first, then information outside
parentheses is read next.
The following example illustrates this:
When you enter (mouse OR rat) AND trap in the title /abstract field, the search engine will retrieve patents containing the
word mouse or the word rat together with the word trap in the title or abstract.
Default operators
You can enter your search terms without having to type in the default operators AND or OR as the system automatically
uses the correct operator within the following fields:
For the title and abstract fields, the default operator is AND
For the publication number, publication date, application number and priority number fields, the default operator is OR
For the inventor and applicant fields, the default operator is AND
For the ECLA and IPC fields, the default operator is AND
The mandatory operator for combining 2 or more input fields is AND
6. Patent Searching in esp@cenet
The following searches are used to find the patents and patent
information
Quick Search
Advanced Search
Classification Search
Number Search
Legal status, Event history and Citations (Register Plus)
Smart Search
9. Advanced Search
•Maximum of 10 search terms per field
•Maximum of 21 search terms and 20
operators per mask
Gene? and Transition?
Source Link: http://ep.espacenet.com/advancedSearch?locale=en_V3
12. European Classification (ECLA)
The ECLA classification system is an extension of the International
Patent Classification (IPC). It is however more precise, having twice as
many entries (ECLA: 140 000; IPC: 70 000).
ECLA format: B65D81/20B2A
IPC format: B65D81/20
European Classification system is dynamic and updated on a weekly
basis
17. Numbers search in espacenet
Publication number: CC and 1 to 12 digits Number (Ex: US7278548, WO2007030511)
Priority number: CCYYYY and maximum seven digits: (GB19958026)
Application number: CCYYYY and maximum seven digits (Ex. GB19950008026)
NPL reference number: XP and maximum seven digits (Ex. XP1, XP000123456)
New EP applications are normally added to the EP database every
Wednesday (after 14.00 hrs)
• Maximum of 10 search terms per field
• Maximum of 21 search terms and 20 operators per mask
18. Number search
EP documents published
in the last two years
Worldwide database
containing almost 60 million
documents
WIPO documents published
in the last two years
Click on this link to
open the document
21. What can you find in Register Plus?
Register Plus is divided into a number of different sections
About this File Contains bibliographic and procedural status information, plus
the file history.
Legal Status Shows the most important legal events in the European procedure,
plus any information available to us on the fate of the European patent once it
passes in the responsibility of the designated states following grant.
Event History Lists events for the current file in chronological order.
Citations List of documents found during the patentability search for the
European patent application or cited by the applicant.
Patent Family Displays a list of patent documents from around the world that are
linked to the European patent application by a common priority number.
All Documents Shows a complete list of the contents of the file at the EPO,
together with links that open each document in the viewer.
23. Field Identifiers
The following table gives an overview of the field identifiers available in Smart Search and their
definition with an example of how to use them:
Field Field
Description Examples Description Examples
identifier identifier
in inventor in=smith ipc core and additional
cn cn=A63B49/02
information
pa applicant pa=siemens
ipc advanced and
ti title ti="mouse trap" ai ai= A63B49/08
invention information
ab abstract ab="mouse trap" ipc advanced and
an an=A63B49/08
pr priority number pr=ep20050104792 additional information
pn publication number pn=ep1000000 ia=Apple OR
ia inventor and applicant
ia="Ries klaus"
ap application number ap=jp19890234567
ta="laser
pd=20080107 OR ta title and abstract
printer"
pd publication date pd="07/01/2008"
OR pd=07/01/2008 title, abstract, inventor txt=microscope
txt
and applicant lens
ct citation/ cited document ct=ep1000000
application, publication
ec european classification ec="A61K31/13" num num=ep1000000
and priority number
international c ci and cn c=A63B49/02
ic ic=A63B49/08
classification
a ai and an a=A63B49/08
ipc core and invention
information ipc ic and c and a ipc=A63B49/08
ci ci=A63B49/02
cl ipc and ec cl=C10J3
24. Operators in Smart Search
• Boolean operators
AND, OR, NOT are allowed. The default operator is AND. Left has precedence over right. No operator has precedence by default.
• Proximity operators
Example: mouse prox/distance<3 trap
The system will find patents where the words mouse and trap are less than three words apart in the TXT identifier and in the order shown.
Example: mouse prox/unit=sentence trap
The system will find patents where the words mouse and trap happen to be in the same sentence in the TXT identifier.
Example: mouse prox/unit=paragraph trap
The system will find patents where the words mouse and trap happen to be in the same paragraph in the TXT identifier.
Example: ia=Apple prox/ordered ia=Corp
The system will retrieve documents having Apple Corp but not Corp Apple.
• Comparison operators
The terms to be searched within a specific field identifier should be surrounded by quotation marks.
•=
Equal to
This is the default relation.
e.g. pa=siemens
• all
All terms entered within quotes will be found within the field identifier, although perhaps not in the order in which they appear.
e.g. ti all "paint brush hair"
• any
Any of the terms entered within quotes will be retrieved within the field identifier.
e.g. ti any "motor engine"
• Operators which are only valid for the publication date field identifier
• within
e.g. pd within "2005 2006" OR pd within "2005, 2006".
• >=
Greater than or equal to
e.g. pd >=2005 will retrieve documents having a publication date higher than or equal to 2005.
• <=
Less than or equal to
e.g. pd <=2005 will retrieve documents having a publication date less than or equal to 2005.
25. Kind Type of Document
Country
Code
A1 APPLICATION PUBLISHED WITH SEARCH REPORT
A2 APPLICATION PUBLISHED WITHOUT SEARCH REPORT
A3 SEARCH REPORT
A4 SUPPLEMENTARY SEARCH REPORT
A8 MODIFIED FIRST PAGE
European Patent Office (EPO)
(EP) A9 MODIFIED COMPLETE SPECIFICATION
B1 PATENT
B2 PATENT AFTER MODIFICATION
B3 AFTER LIMITATION PROCEDURE
B8 MODIFIED FIRST PAGE GRANTED PATENT
B9 CORRECTED COMPLETE GRANTED PATENT
27. Limitations
esp@cenet® has the following search limitations:
Search terms in the abstract must be in English
When combining search fields the default operator is AND and cannot be changed
Truncation limitations
Apostrophes, slashes and hyphens cannot be used. Please use blanks instead
Not all documents have English abstracts, titles, European classification or International classifications
(check coverage)
Different search mask depending on the database you choose to search in
Maximum of 100000 results per query but only 500 matching documents will be listed
EP and WO documents with a maximum of 500 pages can be downloaded in one go
Other patent documents with a maximum of 250 pages can be downloaded in one go
Maximum of 100 documents stored in "my patents list" for one year
It is not possible to store XP documents in "my patents list"
It is not possible to retrieve an XP document by the name of the author or to limit a search to XP documents
only
No statistical analysis possible. Please have a look at the Annual report and at the following page.
No search history provided
